


Peanut Bars

by Blue_Blossom90



Category: K-pop, VIXX
Genre: F/M, Vixx - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4611471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Blossom90/pseuds/Blue_Blossom90





	Peanut Bars

He found her sitting on the floor before the vending machine, knees drawn up to her chest, arms tightly wound around her legs, with her head buried in her arms, and hiccupping sobs emanating from her body. It was long past three in the morning, yet here he found a weeping girl in front of the vending machines.

Her sobs seemed so inconsolable that he did not know just how to begin to approach her. He combed his fingers through his hair, rubbing the back of his head several times before he finally brought himself to clearing his throat.

“Ahem, excuse me, miss?”

The girl didn’t hear him over her continuous sobs. He looked around for help, catching the last glimpse of the student who’d gone to fetch him disappearing out the door. No one wanted to deal with a weeping girl on the last two weeks of the semester.

Sighing, he crouched down, tentatively extending a hand out towards her, gently nudging her on the shoulder.

“Miss?”

With a piercing wail that startled him so much he ended up falling back on his butt on the hard floor, the girl raised her head.

“What do you want?” she demanded with a face blotched red and white. The trails of her tears glowed visibly, her dark, disheveled hair clinging to her damp cheeks. She sniffed so hard he was sure her snot traveled all the way up to her brain.

He could not keep the stutter out of his words when he asked, “Are you okay, miss?”

As he knew she would, the college girl nearly jumped to her feet as she launched herself at him. N scurried away, failing to get very far, seeing as he never rose to his own feet to begin with. He leaned away from the girl, placing his weight on his hands.

She was now the one crouched before him, the front of his prim, white dress shirt crinkled within her shaking fists. Her eyes and expression were wild, her head a chaotic mess, evidence that she had viciously attacked her curls in frustration.

“Am I okay?” she gave a wild, creepy giggle as tears welled up in her eyes. “Am I okay? Of course! I’m perfectly okay! I just lost half—half!—of my final paper! It’s due tomorrow at noon! At noon!”

She laughed again, shaking him weakly and roughly at the same time. “I have three other finals I have yet to study for! I won’t be able to go on vacation with my family because I didn’t manage to get time off of work! Those bastards gave the promotion to the laziest employee after I worked my ass off for the opportunity! Do you know why?”

She gave him a vicious shake with each word. “DO. YOU. KNOW. WHY?!”

N felt a slight fear clench his stomach. A fear not for himself, but originating from a growing concern for the girl that tried her best to unbalance him with her weakly violent force.

“W-why?” he finally managed to ask.

“ _Because I’m a university student!_ ”

“W-what?”

“They don’t want to have to deal with someone that takes time off to go to class! And to top it all off, they’re saying that they’re cutting my hours! How will I pay off the rest of my tuition fee?! I won’t be able to make the next payment!! If I don’t finish with my payments…oh, God, will I even be allowed to graduate?”

She stopped shaking him. She lowered her gaze, her eyes overflowing with constant tears. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. She gasped for air, her sobs causing a spasm in her chest. Alarmed, N sat up properly, his hands taking her by the shoulders.

“Please, calm down.”

The warmth from his long-fingered hands seeped through her clothes onto her skin. With a hiccupping sob, she dropped her head into his chest. The scent of his cologne prickled her nose, it was a really pleasant scent, welcoming and kind, but it caused her to sniff all the harder because of it.

“Now, now,” N said as he procured a handkerchief from his pocket, lifting her head to dab at her tears. “Do you think you can take a deep breath?”

She sniffed again, biting her lip. He spotted the tremble still present in her chin. Smiling kindly, he allowed her to blow her nose on his handkerchief and continue crying.

She knelt beside him, her legs tucked neatly underneath her. N smiled, drawing his long limbs in, sitting cross-legged on the floor watching the desperate girl cry and cry and cry. After a good thirty minutes of incessant tears, her sobs diminished into sniffs.

“Better?”

“Mhmm,” she nodded, using the crumpled up handkerchief to wipe her nose. “I’m sorry. I-I’ll wash this and give it back. Ah, no, I’ll buy you a new one… I think I ruined this one.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely ruined,” he teased, “but I’m glad you’ve stopped crying. Although, it’s understandable…all that stuff you’re going through.”

“Oh! I wasn’t crying over that…”

Shocked, and really quite confused, N listed his head, looking into her bloodshot eyes. “Oh? Then why…?”

“The stupid vending machine gave me a peanut bar when I pushed in the code for M&Ms. It was my only dollar and it gave me a stupid peanut bar! What the heck is a stupid peanut bar anyway?!”

N stared at her incredulous for a good while before he burst out laughing. He couldn’t believe his ears! The girl narrowed her eyes, scowling until, slowly, she also laughed at her situation.

“You’re telling me you can handle all that other stuff but a peanut bar makes you break down crying?” N really tried his best not to laugh too hard at her. It had not been that long since he’d also been in a similar situation, but he just found it oh, so cute!

“I-I guess it just sent me over the edge.” The soft red tint on her cheeks made her adorable, her wild hair still stuck to her damp skin.

Before he knew it, N’s hands had reached over and combed her hair out of her face. He’d never met such an interesting, heart-warming character such as the girl that still knelt on the floor with a blotchy, round face, swollen red eyes, wild, disheveled curly hair, and a smile so whitely happy it added to her chaotic state.

“C’mon, let’s get you off the floor before your legs fall asleep and—”

“Aah! Too late! Too late! Ow, ow! Prickly foot, prickly foot!”

He just managed to catch her as she stumbled around the break room. After settling her on one of the sofas Student Government had fought so hard to be given, he went over to the vending machines and bought two cool drinks and M&Ms.

“You shouldn’t be eating this so late,” he said as she gratefully—or maybe greedily?—took the chocolates from him. “Did you not bring something to eat? Wait, what am I saying? You should be asleep! It’s almost five in the morning!”

“I can’t,” she said between munches. “I have to try and finish my paper. I won’t make it with an A…that possibility is long gone, but if I try I can get a B.”

He watched her stumble over to the table where she had left her work. From the way in which she continued to swing her legs, he knew that they were still prickling.

“Have you told your professor that your work was lost? Maybe he’ll give you an extension.”

“HA! As if! He’s the greatest asshole on campus!”

“Why do you say that?” N pulled up a chair and sat beside her, stealing glances at the screen as her fingers flew furiously across the keyboard. It amazed him how quickly her ideas flowed despite the condition she had just been in and his continuous questions. He knew he should let her work, but he was much too intrigued by this girl.

“Nobody likes him. He assigns so much work and demands unreasonable things of us! He thinks his course is the only course we’re taking. Ugh!”

“Have you talked to him about it? Maybe he’d be willing to accommodate.” He opened his drink, sipping at the cool carbonated substance while reading the words on the screen. “You misspelled schizophrenia.”

The word quickly disappeared and reappeared in its proper form. “Talked to him? I’ve never even met the guy! I don’t know what all the fuss is about him. Everyone says his courses are the best on campus. Yeah, right! His online course is a mess. He’s never in his office when he says he will be and he never checks his email. He never answers the phone either or returns calls, yet he keeps assigning so much work. I swear he’s single and bitter and this is why he does this! Stupid Cha Hakyeon!”

N choked on his drink. He coughed ferociously, thumping at his chest with a fist. The girl jumped at the sudden sound, smashing the keyboard. She reached over and began to pat his back after offering him a hastily obtained paper towel.

“Are you okay? You shouldn’t drink so fast!”

“I-I’m fine,” Professor Cha Hakyeon managed to gasp. “Just went down the wrong pipe.” He cleared his throat, coughing out the last of the stray drink.

“Gee, are you sure?”

The worried look that crossed her face made his stomach clench in strange ways. He’d never seen such pretty eyebrows before or such a beautiful round-shaped face.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Listen, I’ll go get us some coffee, alright? I’ll stay up with you until you finish your paper.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, um…”

“N.”

“N?”

“Yes, N. I’ll be right back. You keep working on that paper of yours. Didn’t you say it was due at noon?”

“Argh! Curse that damned Cha Hakyeon! This is why he’s freaking single, I freaking swear! He’s been the bane of my existence all semester! Does he think he can treat his students like this because he has a PhD? Despicable! But if I meet him, I swear I will grab him and shake him so hard his head will roll off! Then I will reattach it on backwards and switch his hands with his feet! See how he likes that!”

Feeling more than a little nervous now, Dr. Cha Hakyeon exited the break room as the girl went on cursing him as she worked on her paper. He didn’t dare breathe until he made it to the library’s front desk. The librarian on night shift looked at him with curiosity as he sat behind one of the computers.

“Did the howling girl finally quiet down?”

“Uh, yes. She’s under a lot of stress.” He didn’t look at the prune-faced woman. She was the rudest librarian he had ever met, entirely uncompassionate of the students’ dilemmas.

“Try and get her out of there. Other students will want to use that room.”

N ignored her as he accessed his work email; no students would go in the break room. Most had already gone home. Those that remained had been camping out in the same area for the entire night.

As his email opened up, he realized that he hadn’t asked her name; there was no way of knowing if she had in fact emailed him because he had no idea under what name to look her under. Mentally kicking himself he simply proceeded to access the site for his online course. After exiting out of everything, he strode over to the coffee maker.

When he returned to the break room, he found the girl hopping about the room, laughing. He set her coffee down as he tried to cool his.

“What’s going on?”

“N!!” She took the cup from him, almost spilling its piping hot contents as she slammed it onto the table, and spun him around. “You won’t believe this! That rotten old man extended the due date! I have until  _tomorrow_  night to finish!”

“That’s great!”

“I’m so stupid! I’ve been sending emails to the wrong address all this time! I realized it when the class message notification popped up!”

N nearly tripped over his own feet hearing her say that. “You what?”

“I had his email wrong. I thought his name had a c in it in Hakyeon but it was a k. I feel just a little bad.”

“Just a little?”

“Well, yeah, he’s still a single bastard that assigns too much work! Anyway, thank you so much for everything!”

She gave him a tight, grateful hug, the top of her head just reaching his chest. She skipped around the break room as she packed her things up. She began yawning, rubbing her eyes as she put the last of her things away. N just watched her in astonishment, drinking his coffee with his hand in his pocket.

“Done?”

“Yeah. I think so. I feel bad, I won’t drink the coffee you brought. If I drink it now, I won’t sleep.”

“Never mind that. Do you live on campus? You look tired. Driving while exhausted is never a good idea.”

“Don’t worry, I live on campus.”

“I’ll walk you over.”

She beamed at him, laughing. “It’s alright. I’m not that far away!”

But in the end, no matter how much she protested, saying she could take care of herself just fine, N walked her home. It really wasn’t a long walk, but it set his mind at ease knowing that she made it without falling asleep on one of the benches she had been so temped to rest on.

“Thank you so much, N. I’ll replace your handkerchief, I promise!”

“Wait,” he called her back before she made her way up. “What’s your name?”

“Oh!”

After rummaging through her bag, she trotted over to him, took his hand and wrote something on his palm. She then grinned at him, her tongue between her teeth, a silly, childish expression with a gleam in her eyes.

She rushed up the stairs, leaving him with burning cheeks as he read her name and  _number_  on his palm.

Unsure of what to do, he walked back to the LRC with butterflies in his stomach. By the time he made it back to the library, Dr. Cha Hakyeon had made up his mind.

He wouldn’t contact her.

And he didn’t.

* * *

 

 

When she walked across the stage, heading towards him, he couldn’t help but grin at her astonished face. She’d tamed her hair, for the most part, and though the makeup made her look remarkably tidy and pretty, he preferred her bare, blotchy, sleep-deprived, diligent face. Her eyes were no longer bloodshot, but wide as she shook his hand—the same hand she had boldly written her contact information on—and took her hard-worked for degree with the other.

Professor Cha Hakyeon couldn’t help it, his grin widened as they posed for the commemorative, complimentary picture.

“Smile,” he said. “You worked hard. Congratulations!”

Years later, he would still tease her about how red her face became and she would threaten to shake him so hard his head would fall off. He would shut her up with kisses and she would grin with her tongue between her teeth. And always, Cha Hakyeon would wipe her tears away with handkerchiefs when vending machines gave her peanut bars.


End file.
